As part of preparations for the Central American and Caribbean Games, the Bermuda women’s national hockey team will face off against the University of California Berkeley in four friendly matches at home this month.

The games will take place at the Flora Duffy Stadium from the end of May to the beginning of June

Kovin Moodley, the national team coach, feels the time is right for his squad to intensify their preparations for the Central American and Caribbean Games, with the hockey matches to be played at Estadio Del Parque El Este in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Moodley, whose team will fly out on on June 24, said the team’s preparations have been split into three parts.

“What we had is three phases to the preparation, the first phase was last year, the second one was at the start of this year for a three-month period and we are just about to enter our final phase,’’ said Moodley.

“At the end of the second phase, we were able to select our team, so we currently have 16 players and two travelling reserve players that are going to come with us. Now we are working on the final phase of preps, where we can polish our team and our tactics and get ourselves as connected as possible before we go away for the games.”

As part of getting the players ready for the challenge they will face in the Dominican Republic, Moodley indicated that they have been working with a fitness trainer to manage the team as best as they can, with the four Berkeley matches giving them a great indicator as to where they stand.

“We have got a team from California coming down on May 24 to play four games.

“We will play a series against a university team from the US, a Division I team which is quite competitive for us, so I think that will do wonders for our preps. It will give us quite a strong sense of where we are and what we need to work on in the two weeks before we jump on a plane and go,’’ said the national team coach.

On what he aims to achieve at the games, Moodley expressed his ambitious desire to make it to the top four of the eight teams taking part.

“We are quite ambitious as a group, also at the same time quite realistic, looking at hockey in this region and what's happened in the past. One of our targets is for us to make the top four, that's an achievement that Bermuda hasn't had yet”.

In the group stage, Bermuda have been drawn to play against Barbados, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba and Mexico make up the other pool. From the group stages, the top two teams progress into a new pool for play-off games to determine the top four.